Cobra Biologics, part of the Cognate BioServices family, an international CDMO for biologics and pharmaceuticals, today announced it has signed a supply agreement with AstraZeneca UK Ltd. to provide GMP manufacture of the adenovirus vector-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate AZD1222, previously known as ChAdOx1 n-CoV-19. The production agreement is part of AstraZeneca’s recently announced in-licensed programme with the University of Oxford to ensure broad and equitable supply of the vaccine throughout the world, at no profit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cobra hit the ground running with AstraZeneca and other manufacturing organisations to provide large scale manufacturing capacity of AZD1222 vaccine. Cobra, along with other consortium members, will be manufacturing the vaccine with first deliveries to begin in the UK in September 2020.
The agreement is a further development of Cobra’s announcement in March 2020, that the Company is working as part of a consortium with the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, and others, to rapidly develop, scale-up and produce the recombinant adenovirus vector ChAdOx1 nCoV-19.